


Waitlist

by embolalia



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Annalise and Bonnie origin story, Gen, references to past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 20:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12349905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: Annalise finds a familiar name on the Middleton Law School waitlist, and changes Bonnie's life for the second time.





	Waitlist

Annalise slaps the seating chart down on her desk. “We’re reversing it this semester,” she orders her TA. “End of the alphabet in the front.” The 3L snatches up the paper and scurries off to inform the handful of students who’ve already arrived.

Annalise slips off her jacket, hanging it over the back of her chair as she scans the faces of the early birds. She doesn’t know exactly what she expects, whether the vestiges of trauma will be apparent or long-buried. She wonders if she’s recognizable herself. 

Being assigned to review the law school waitlist and help with final enrollment decisions was meant to be a punishment after she’d spoken up at her first faculty meeting about the need for better representation of women and students of color. Annalise bemoaned the task to Sam, griping about the Dean’s dated attitudes. But Sam promised Annalise would be a big name on campus soon enough, and set about mixing her a martini while she laid out the applicants’ information on her desk.

The floor fell out from underneath her when Annalise recognized the last name on the list. She downed her glass in a single swallow. “Sam,” she breathed. “Sam?”

He came over, wrapping an arm around her waist as he looked, his grip tightening at the sight. The name of a minor from an old case, sealed in Annalise’s records. The case that finally sent Annalise to therapy and landed her in Sam’s office: Bonnie Winterbottom.

“You probably inspired her,” Sam said. “Doesn’t it make sense she’d want to be like you?”

Annalise leaned into him, pressed a kiss to the curve of his shoulder. “At least it makes this process faster.”

As a teenager the girl was blond, but Annalise’s gaze lingers over every young white woman who makes her way down the auditorium stairs. Bonnie wouldn’t be the first to change her appearance along with her life.

The last time Annalise saw her, Bonnie was fifteen years old and six months pregnant with her father’s child, yet still somehow small, her feet barely touching the floor under the plaintiff’s table. Annalise was barely out of school herself then, not yet specializing in defense or the head of her own legal practice, was trembling with the need for this particular justice.

They sat together, waiting for the verdict in a mostly empty courtroom. On the far side of the room, Bonnie’s aunt and cousins had sided with the monster. Bonnie’s bank of pews was empty.

“I’m sorry,” Bonnie murmured as Annalise rose and glared over the vacant rows.

Annalise blinked down at her. “For what, honey?”

Bonnie shrugged. For whatever had made Annalise angry, her posture seemed to say.

Annalise shook her head. “You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s all these people—your teachers should have seen this sooner! Your friends had parents didn’t they? Don’t those family of yours over there claim to love you? Every single person you ever met should have been about protecting you!” 

“Ms. Harkness!” the judge protested from his bench, raising his eyebrows at her volume. “Statements are over.”

She settled back into her chair with clenched teeth. Nearly twenty years and the smallest of reminders—popsicles, the smell of mothballs—could still set her off. She’d been having nightmares since the case started; Eve had slept on the couch a few times when her thrashing got too bad. She kept suggesting therapy. “None of this is your fault,” Annalise told Bonnie.

The verdict was delivered half an hour later, and Annalise slumped in her seat beside her young client, both diminished, both vindicated. After a few minutes a social worker escorted the girl away.

Annalise sees Bonnie before Bonnie sees her. Of course it’s her: seven years older, but with the same stubborn clench of her jaw, the same mousy hair getting in her eyes. She’s clutching a stack of books to her stomach where she once clutched her growing belly. Bonnie looks up and Annalise sees the moment the girl connects Annalise Keating to Annalise Harkness. Her eyes widen, her jaw trembles around a sudden breath. Annalise wonders for an instant if she’s too much a reminder still of Bonnie’s past. Bonnie turns away, listening to instructions from the TA, then descends to take her seat in the front row. 

Annalise paces the front of the auditorium, watching the young woman out of the corner of her eye. She bites her lips together as she flips through her books, her knees and shoulders hunched together. The posture reminds Annalise of family dinners: wondering if she was safe, trying to contain everything she hadn’t been allowed to feel. Her feet carry her back to Bonnie. She nods down at the girl, and gets the shyest, most brilliant smile in return.

“Alright, let’s get started,” Annalise announces to the class. “Welcome to How to Get Away With Murder.”

Within a few weeks, Annalise hires Bonnie--and a few other students for good measure--calls them the Keating Four and laughs about it with Sam. Together they make Bonnie part of their family, and she talks Annalise through her pregnancy, through her grief for a lost child. In time Bonnie graduates at the top of her class and stays on as an associate.

It works out so well that eleven years later, Annalise tries again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Just recently got sucked into HTGAWM - this is my first story for this fandom! Hope you enjoyed...


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